Saturday, July 28, 2007

The worst way to muffle the echo of rape is death. With this in mind, please consider the positive side to what people think of as being negative coping methods. Self-medication. Disassociation. Repression. Denial. Misdirected anger.

These aren't the best tools, but sometimes they are the best tools available to those trying to survive. If a rape survivor is awash in alcohol, lecturing that person about the dangers of heavy drinking are going to be ineffective at best. At worst, it will add more weight to the survivor's burden. Maybe too much weight for the survivor to bear.

Rather than trying to yank these things away from survivors, try to give them something better to help them cope and to help them survive while being aware of dangers the survivor might not be able to see.

I was sexually violated when the alcohol made me immune to past and present violations. When I didn't care enough what someone did to my body, I was given one of the HPV viruses which later led to surgery to remove pre-cancerous cells from my cervix. I was in cars with people driving drunk. I drove drunk. I went hitchhiking during the time that Ted Bundy was raping and murdering girls and women in my home state despite warnings about the dangers because nobody was going to control me ever again.

I almost died from alcohol poisoning about a year after my first rape, but a lecture on drinking from my rapist a few months after he raped me just drove me faster toward the solice of drunkness.

There was one person who could have silenced that echo. My rapist. He could have silenced the echo by not forcing himself on me.

So let's all do what we can to muffle the echo through effective prevention.

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About Abyss2hope

Abyss2hope is centered on date rape, but isn't limited to discussing crimes which can be described this way since the causes and attitudes related to date rape are interconnected with domestic violence and other types of sexual violence.

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